May 16, 2014
Today was our first culture day! Lauren and I have decided that every Friday, to give the kids a break from our intense Chinese language immersion, we need a day to discuss and learn about Chinese customs. Our mentor suggested before the project started that we try to incorporate subjects such as math, or social studies so that the students can directly relate their Chinese studies to what they’ve been studying in school all year long. As our culture day activity we focused on tea. In order to merge math in, we created an activity in which the students hosted a tea tasting event for 100 people. The activity required that the students convert fractions, ration money, etc., but the biggest obstacle seemed to be that of working together! There was plenty of arguing and even some tears but ultimately all the groups successfully got all their guests tea and stayed within budget. The hardest part for us was to try to mediate situations but often found ourselves stuck when one student in particular got really upset. We had to remind the students that in a group, if one person wins, they all win and that in the end, it’s just a game! The smiles were soon brought back out as the students were able to really taste tea that Lauren brought from China and we ended the day with some pronunciation review.
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